


We've Got Bills To Pay

by Qpenguin98



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Angst, Asexual Character, Dave gets fired, Other, Prostitution, Underage Prostitution, haha what a pair, purely self indulgent, shit gets worse from there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-19
Updated: 2015-05-19
Packaged: 2018-03-31 06:24:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3967789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Qpenguin98/pseuds/Qpenguin98
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bro tells you it’s fine, that he’s got this month covered. But you can tell the bills are wearing him thin. He’s up all night calculating and taking certain things out of the equation to make sure you have a roof over your head, but nothing seems to be working. You’ve got to get three hundred more dollars by next week and you have no idea how you’re going to do it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We've Got Bills To Pay

Your name is Dave Strider and now is the worst possible time for your boss to lay you off. But here you are, sitting on a bench outside your old Applebee’s with you head in your hands and your last paycheck in your pocket. It’s not even fifty dollars. You want to cry but you can’t because a: you’re a Strider and Striders don’t cry, and b: you’re in public you fuckwad, why would you cry here?

Rent’s coming up in a few days and this paycheck was going to be the only thing keeping you and your Bro in the apartment. He’s working two jobs, but there’s a car payment, gas, food, rent, and a myriad of other things he’s got to pay for. You got a job to help out, but your measly forty two dollars isn’t going to do jack shit for your rent bill.

You texted Bro to come pick you up ten minutes ago and you hope he gets here soon. You feel humiliated sitting here.

He pulls up into the parking spot next to your bench and you stand up and get in his car. You don’t even deserve to be wasting his gas like this, can’t even help pay for it, yet here you go, sucking up his money. Bro looks at you and you dig the crumpled check out of your pocket and hand it to him.

“What?”

“I got fired.”

You stare straight ahead, not daring to look at him. Your face is set in a mask and you’re trying so fucking hard not to break it.

“What’d you do?”

“They’re downsizing and I guess Dana and I were the least important employees.”

“Shit.”

You nod, still not looking at him.

You hear a sigh and from the corner of your eye you see him shift into reverse. There’s a rattling in the engine that you know can’t be good but you definitely don’t have the money for it.

“It’s not the worst thing that could happen,” he says. “We’ve had to live a week on ramen before, we can do it again.”

You feel embarrassed and useless for the fact you have to live on shitty noodles for the next week. It doesn’t even matter that you hate the taste. You’ll force yourself to eat the fucking things.

“Really Dave, it’s not that bad. We were pretty close to rent already, we can make it.”

You force your rigid body to relax, sticking a hand out the window and sitting back in the seat. You glance at your Bro and he gives you an encouraging smile. You don’t believe it for a second.

\---

You wake up in the middle of the night to a loud bang and your Bro shouting, “FUCK.”

You clamber your way out of your bed and into the hallway silently, padding along the wall until you can peek around the corner. Bro sitting at the table with his head in his hands, papers and a calculator surrounding him on the floor. You recognize them as the bills you’ve been getting in the mail. A floorboard creaks under your foot and you flatten yourself to the wall. You don’t know if he heard you, but when you look around the corner, he’s in the same position, only now he’s got a beer.

You make your way quietly back to your room and crawl into your bed, feeling even lower than you were before.

\---

You’ve been trying to get a job for days now, walking to every place hiring directly after school. But you’ve got nothing, absolutely nothing. You can tell you won’t get hired when you walk into the interview, and their sickly sweet goodbyes with promises of phone calls confirm it for you.

Bro tells you it’s fine, that he’s got this month covered. But you can tell the bills are wearing him thin. He’s up all night calculating and taking certain things out of the equation to make sure you have a roof over your head, but nothing seems to be working. You’ve got to get three hundred more dollars by next week and you have no idea how you’re going to do it.

On the way home from one of your interviews, you decide to take the alleyway shortcut. While walking through it, you pass a scantily dressed girl. She’s selling herself; you realize after she offers her mouth up to you for the evening. You shiver and walk faster. You have no desire for anyone to get in your pants, certainly not her.

\---

Things are really bad. Really really bad. It’s not the ramen you’ve been eating for the past week and a half. It’s not the fact that you’ve hardly been showering to make sure the water bill goes down. It’s the fact that your Bro’s been checking up on you while you sleep.

He comes in sometime around midnight. The door creaking always wakes you up, but you don’t let on. He just stands there for a few minutes, looking at you, making sure you’re alright. He hasn’t done that since you were ten and you were so close to losing the apartment that you had to start boxing up your belongings.

With the ramen and the water bill, he’s managed to scrounge up an extra $150. That leaves just about $150 more. You have no idea where it’s going to come from and you can’t tell Bro, but you’re terrified. You don’t know what will happen if you can’t pay, you’ve had too many late rents in the past year.

Your Bro keeps acting like everything’s fine. He’s strifing you like normal, but he’s sloppy, and you’re letting him win to keep up the normalcy of it. You just want things to be okay, you want one of your jobs to work out. But even if it did, you wouldn’t get the money in time.

You just want to go to bed knowing you’ll be fine next week, but there’s no way to guarantee that.

\---

There’s a way to guarantee that.

You’re nodding off to sleep when you remember the girl in the alleyway. She offered her mouth, not her whole body. And while you really do not want people in your pants, you might be able to handle people in your mouth.

You try and make yourself look nice, desirable. Your Bro’s gone to bed, thank fuck, so there’s no worry of him coming in to check on you. You make sure you’ve got your phone in your pocket, along with your key, and then you leave.

No matter how many street lights you pass, Houston’s still terrifyingly dark at night. You try your best to avoid any alleyways before realizing that that’s where you need to be.

There’s no light and all the girls in this alley have skirts riding up their asses and you force yourself to look forward. You’re like them. You’re here for the same reasons they are. You stand in your own little corner, flicking on a lighter you’ve had for years, and someone walks up to you.

“You legal?”

You aren’t exactly. You’ve got a good year and a half before you are, but this guy doesn’t need to know that, so you nod.

“What’re you offering?”

“Blowjob.”

“That’s it?”

“You want to wander around and find another guy to suck your dick?”

He sighs and you know you’ve got him. “Fuck, fine. What’s your price?”

You steel yourself and say it with the most confidence you can muster. “Fifty.”

He scoffs at you. “Are you serious? I could get one of those whores to do it for twenty five!”

“But you don’t want ‘one of those whores,’ do you?”

“Jesus Christ I just wanna get my dick sucked why is this so expensive?” he mutters to himself. He hasn’t left yet, so you’re not worried.

“Fine,” he says. “Fifty’s fine. You got a personal preference in places you like too?”

You shake your head in amusement and he sighs in relief, leading you into a shady looking convenience store bathroom.

You never realized how much tile hurt your knees until you were kneeling on it for more than five minutes. That’s what you’re focusing on, not the dick in your mouth. You’re sloppy at this and you know it and the guy knows it but he doesn’t really seem to care, as his hands are nearly ripping your hair out. You focus on that, too. The pain of the situation makes it almost bearable.

When he finishes, it’s salty and bitter and you almost spit it right back out. But you need the money, and you need it bad. He gives it to you, tells you to practice more, and leaves. You spend a solid seven minutes washing your mouth out.

The rest of the night grants you three more customers, one of which makes you promise him that getting a blow job isn’t gay if it’s just for urges. Another one makes you blow him in his car and you have to threaten to light it on fire to get out with just his dick in you mouth.

You get home at around four and stick the $200 to the table with a shuriken. Even though they only touched your face, your whole body feels used and disgusting. You get in the shower and stand there for about five minutes before remembering you can’t take long showers right now. You put two capfuls of mouthwash in your mouth and brush your teeth three times for good measure. Your lips are swelling with bruising and you’ll deal with that in the morning, but right now you need to sleep.

\---

You wake up to Bro slamming your door open with the money in his hand.

“Where the fuck did you get this?”

“I got a job,” you reply smoothly.

“Doing what?”

“Mowing lawns.”

“How in the hell did you get to the suburbs? We live in the middle of the city.”

“Friend gave me a ride.” You scalp is still stinging and your lips have to be purple with how badly they ache, and you know he won’t miss those things.

“Dave, I told you I had it covered-”

“But you didn’t! We were 150 dollars short, and now we’ve got fifty over that so we can eat something other than fucking ramen! Don’t think I didn’t notice how you stayed up all night with the bills. Or how you started coming into my room in the middle of the night. You only pull that shit when it’s really fucking bad, like about to lose the apartment bad. Don’t act like you had it under control because we both know that’s a lie.”

He’s quiet for a minute. “How’d you get the money?”

“It doesn’t really matter now, does it?”

“It does to me.”

You swallow hard. “I told you, I went out and mowed-”

“Bullshit.”

“It’s not.”

“If I don’t get to lie about bills you don’t get to lie about what the hell you did to get this money.”

You turn your head from his and grab your shades from you bedside table, sliding them onto your face.

“Dave.”

“Whored out my mouth.”

“What?”

You glance at him and he looks horrified. You drop your head into your knees.

“You’re joking, right?”

You’re silent, because he knows you’re not joking. The lips give it away. You’re embarrassed and disgusting and you should have just let him handle it you never wanted people in your mouth and now they’re there and they won’t get out ever because they put their _dicks_ in your _mouth_ and youlet them. It’s gross and disgusting, and you’re gross and disgusting, but at least you’ll have a bed.

You don’t realize you’re crying until Bro pulls you into a hug. He never does that anymore, and that just makes you cry harder. You’re not even sure why you’re crying. You think it might be the sheer humiliation of this situation, but it might just be the all the stress that’s merged together in the past two weeks. It’s probably a mixture of both, but you just want it to stop.

Eventually it does, but you don’t feel any less humiliated, nor any less used. Your jaw’s still stretched and your lips are still bruised and your knees still ache.

“Don’t fucking do that again,” makes its way into your ear.

“Don’t keep life altering bills from me,” you retort back.

“Fine.”

“Agreed.”

“Now, you were saying something about eating something other than ramen?”

 

**Author's Note:**

> oh wow self indulgent angst about my favorite angst child.  
> i havent forgotten about the other fic, dont worry, the next chapters almost done. this was just a quickie before finals and shit  
> tell me about typos and feel free to give advice!


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